WaPost: A Baltimore case shows how Trumps deportation crackdown can lead to lawlessness
June 4 at 7:21 PM
AN ODDBALL story in Baltimore caught our attention the other day as a microcosmic illustration of the damage President Trump’s intensifying deportation crackdown may inflict. It involves an alleged rape victim, the lawyer for the alleged rapist, an alleged $3,000 bribe and — the tale’s real protagonist — a rising climate of fear that has gripped communities of undocumented immigrants.
The story involves a Baltimore lawyer, Christos Vasiliades, who represented a man accused of rape. In the event, Mr. Vasiliades himself was arrested for trying to get his client’s accuser to back off by warning her that she risked arrest as an undocumented immigrant if she showed up in court to testify. (He is also alleged to have offered the victim a carrot — $3,000 in cash — to go along with the threatened stick.)
The alleged victim refused to be victimized twice. She reported the conversation to law enforcement, which subsequently managed to record Mr. Vasiliades making his offer, according to a criminal indictment charging him with witness intimidation and obstruction of justice.
Mr. Vasiliades’s gambit might have been far-fetched if not for the national context — specifically, the accelerating pace of arrests of unauthorized immigrants, including tens of thousands of immigrants with no criminal history, by federal deportation agents, and flurries of reports involving arrests of immigrants at courthouses around the country.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-baltimore-case-shows-how-trumps-deportation-crackdown-can-lead-to-lawlessness/2017/06/04/f16b7e10-4252-11e7-8c25-44d09ff5a4a8_story.html?utm_term=.aa809327e27a
